1358 INDIAN MEDICINAL PLANTS SlEGESBECKIA LilUl. Herbs, usually annual, more or less glandulai-pubescent. Leaves opposite, toothed. Heads small, in leafy lax panicles, heterogamous, subradiate, yellow or white; ray-flowers female, fertile, 1-seriate; disk-flowers hermaphrodite, feitile or the inner sterile. Involucre campanulate or hemispheric; bracts few, herbaceous, glandular, the exterior (usually 5) linear-cuneate, spreading, the inner enclosing the iay-flowers. Receptacle small; palese membranous, concave, often enclosing the flowers. Corollas of female flowers with a short tube and 2-3-fid limb, those of the hermaphrodite flowers tubular, the limb campanulate and 5-fid, or narrow and 3-4-toothed. Anther-bases entire. Style-arms of hermaphrodite flowers short, flattened, subacute. Pappus 0. Achenes obovoid-oblong, not compressed, often incuived, obtuse.—Species 4.—Tropical and warm temperate. 5. orientahs Linn, is used medicinally in Persia, China, Indo China, Tahiti, Mauritius, La Reunion. 1. Siegesbeckia orientalis Linn. Sp PL (1753) 900; Wight Ic. t 1103.—5 brachiata Roxb. FL Ind. Ill (1832) 439.—PLATE 529. A large annual herb 0.6-1.2 m. high, stem stiff, erect, with horizontal branches below and dichotomously branched ones above; stem and blanches tinged with purple? terete, pubescent. Leaves opposite, 5-12.5 by 3 2-7 cm., 'triangular-ovate, acute or acuminate, deeply and irregularly toothed, the uppermost leaves much smaller and nearly entire, all finely pubescent on both sides, base cuneate, running down wing-like into a somewhat obscure petiole. Heads small, peduncled, in leafy panicles; flowers yellow, those of the ray led beneath. Involucre bracts in 2 rows, very dissimilar; the 5 outer exceeding 1.3 cm. long, hnear-spathulate or clavate, horizontally spreading with lecurved margins, the upper surface covered with large viscous glandular hairs; the 5 inner bracts short, boat-shaped, obtuse, glandular-haii y on the back, each bract enclosing one of the ray-flowers. Ray-flowers usually 59 ligulate, the ligules recurved, 3-toothed at the apex Pappus 0. Achenes each enclosed in a boat- shaped bract, glabrous, slightly rough, black. Distribution: Throughout India, Ceylon—Most tropical and subtropical regions of both hemispheres.